


There Can Be No True Despair without Hope

by Handalion



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Bad Ending, Gen, Mastermind Naegi Makoto, One Shot, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1426777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Handalion/pseuds/Handalion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naegi may have been a nobody, but Junko still had a place for him in her grand scheme. So she turned him, and together they ended the world. Now, at the very end of the academic coliseum, his true colors are revealed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Can Be No True Despair without Hope

It was over. The final vote had come in 5-1 to punish Naegi so that the rest could continue to live in Hope's Peak. It wasn't surprising. He bearly said anything to defend himself, and so they all succumbed to Despair. Of all his friends, only Shou would even look at him as Junko caressed the air above the big red button at her side that would seal his fate.

"Awwright, the verdict is in! **You guys** know what time it is, so let's get started!"

Raising her hand high, she brought it down towards the button... but at the last instant twisted her wrist so her hand went around it instead, to touch a hidden button underneath the pedestal.

A burst of smoke shot up around Naegi, hiding him from their view. Everyone looked up, expecting to see him dragged off. But that didn't happen. Instead, the sound of coughing came from the cloud, and words they couldn't possibly have expected to hear.

"E-... Enoshima-san... You made the smoke too thick." It said, interspersed with coughing.

They watched in confusion as a fan came on, blowing the smoke away to reveal Naegi, safe and sound, but not quite as they knew him. He had quickly changed into a thick coat, unzipped, white on the outside and black on the inside, its hood adorned with bear ears. His old jacket and hoody were gone, replaced by a black dress shirt and a white tie hastily tied around his neck like a noose, with the same red skull-like mark that was on his old hood. That he was bent over his rail, coughing his lungs out, only made it all the more incomprehensible.

"Wh-, what is this!? Why are you wearing that!?" Asahina cried out first.

Shou crossed her arms appraisingly. "Nice outfit, Mah-kun. Hmm, gotta say it kinda suits you."

Naegi scratched his cheek with an embarrassed chuckle, before starting to search his pockets. "I... actually had a whole speech planned out for this part, but..." Turning around, he bent down to check his old discarded clothes on the floor as well. "It looks like Enoshima-san has gone and taken my note cards." Standing up again, he met his betrayers with a smile. “I guess I’ll have to wing it. It’s just how it looks, **you guys** haven’t got it wrong. I’m working with her.” He said, indicating Junko.

Junko snorted imperiously. “You’re working _for_ me, you mere mortal.”

Naegi sighed. “Yeah, I know. Look, can I just talk for a while? We’ve got a lot to get through.”

“Hmph. We allow this.”

“Thanks.” Looking around at the other academic coliseum participants, at their dawning comprehension and renewed horror, he took a deep breath and began. “I need to explain how this happened, both for you and the audience around the world. It goes back to before the worst incident in Hope’s Peak Academy’s history. Some of you may still remember that Hope’s Peak Academy started up a preparatory school a few years back. It was just a regular high school, and only really existed to increase funding for the main school’s research. When people figured that out it… It wasn’t good. They started to hold demonstrations to demand equal learning opportunities, but of course that was never a possibility.

“Still, I decided, with a little prodding from Enoshima-san, that the protesters were in the right. I went down, and offered to negotiate for them. They were a little wary of me, not to mention resentful because I got in only through Luck, but all that changed after I went to the school’s steering committee to make their case… and was expelled for it.” His smile turned bitter. “At that point I was seen as a martyr, and the demonstration doubled in size overnight. It even included lots of people who had nothing to do with the prep school.”

“As for me, even though I was expelled… Maybe because I was expelled, I was still able to get a job on the brand name of Hope’s Peak. It was a good one too, spokesperson for the largest trade union confederation in the country. At that point, the world’s Despair was still hidden right under the surface, but people in the know already had some idea of what might be coming. The union was going to make a lot of big pushes for workers’ benefits to try to change that, and I pushed to expand that even more… Apparently, I’m really convincing and inspiring. I thought that people’s spirits would be lifted if they saw us fighting as many battles for them as we could, and they were. For a little while. But in the end the Hope I fed them poisoned their souls. Our few victories energized them, while our many defeats angered them. After a few months of that, to get the government to intervene and tip the scales in our favor, we eventually had a massive march on the Diet building, which turned into a massive confrontation with the police, which turned into a massive riot. And that was the proper start of the Most Despairingly Maleficent Whatever.”

“No way. No way! You started it!? I thought she was the one…” Hagakure frantically waved his arm towards Junko.

Taking out her clipboard and glasses, Junko clinically detailed her role. “Unbeknownst to Naegi-san at the time, among many other things, I was taking steps to manipulate the social conversation through the internet, using arguments and memes that spoke to the hidden worries and desires of the masses, undermining their confidence in the union confederations, which simultaneously made them desperate, causing them to grip onto their Hope more strongly, and inspired them to greater violence when his failure became evident.”

Then her tongue came out. “Heh! What a bunch of fucking asswipes! They were just itching for an excuse to give in!”

And suddenly, she changed into bunny mode. “Hey, hey, you know what they say, that it’s what’s on the inside that counts most. Naegi and me, we found out what that is together! Wasn’t that so much fun?”

Craning his head back to look into the distance, Naegi nodded. “It was really something… Seeing society collapse from the heart of it all. Just incredible, looking back at it. Someone as average as me did something like that. Thousands of people died, including my own parents, who only came out because I was there. I thought that it was all my fault. I had given everyone Hope that they could have much better lives, and that Hope was so strong that they refused to give up it no matter what. People started screaming that they were going to take what they deserved from the rich who had hoarded everything. Once I found out what direction the mob of humanity had decided to go, I just pointed myself that way so I could lead them. I was already damned. I thought all I had left was to see it through to the end.”

Bringing his gaze down to Togami, he smiled the brilliant smile that had brightened the day for all of them at one point or another, but now only made them all feel sick. “That was when Enoshima-san came to me. She gave me focus, made me see that this was how everyone wanted it to be, deep down. She told me about her plans. She also told me that you, Togami-kun, had returned to your family for the safety of an army of private guards, but that it wouldn’t be enough to save you. She wanted to have you as part of this game, so she asked me to get you out when the rioters came. I snuck in with them, got you a disguise that made you look like part of the hired help, and saved your life. Then I turned around and oversaw the execution of your entire family. The mob actually wasn’t going to. They just wanted to loot your estate. But I promised them that it had to be done for a better, freer, more equal future.” He said all of this with pure, cheerful frankness.

After that incident Junko had given him the title Super Duper High School Hope for his ability to rile people up, and drive them ever further into anarchy and Despair. He wasn’t even in high school any more, and he suspected that it was at least in part meant to piss off Kamukura. There was a lot of bad blood between the two of them, at least in one direction. Naegi pitied Kamukura for giving up on his own abilities, and Kamukura despised Naegi for being able to keep going despite all his weaknesses and failures, when Kamukura himself could not. This was the final straw. Junko was saying that he was still only equal to, if not beneath, the talentless, super-average dropout. The poor boy had given up so much, but all the brainwashing, and all that he lost was ultimately for nothing.

Kamukura had tried to strangle him, and Naegi let him. Right to the verge of unconsciousness, he smiled at the other boy. He honestly would have been fine with dying right then and there, but to Kamukura his resignation was just one more unforgivable insult, because there was nothing he could do to defeat Naegi, nothing he could do with all his strength and power and mental prowess. So he let go and ran away. It was then that Naegi realized how much he had changed. He didn’t like it, but his Hope would only allow him to go on with his new, twisted optimism.

Togami said nothing after Naegi's last words, but he didn’t have to for it to be clear that he was livid beyond words. Naegi took a step back, waving his hands in front of him as if he was backtracking from saying something pigheaded to a girl he liked. “Ah, don’t worry, Togami-kun. I’m not like Enoshima-san at all! I don’t go in for those ridiculously overdone executions. When we killed your family, we just lined them up against a wall and gunned them down with a firing squad. It was very tasteful, I promise!”

Junko gasped and lowered her head in utter dejection. “You… You don’t like my executions? That isn’t even Despair-inducing. It just makes me… sad.”

As Naegi tried even more frantically to apologize to Junko, Hagakure and Asahina shared glances, trying to find anyone more sure than themselves.

“Wait.” Hagakure started. “This is impossible. Even more than the end of the world, this is impossible!”

“Well… I did overhear him say to Oowada-kun once that he liked bears. Maybe, I don’t know.” Asahina said, fidgeting with her jacket.

“There’s more.” Kirigiri spoke for the first time since Naegi’s revelation, not raising her eyes from the wooden bar in front of her. “I noticed something different even when I rescued him from the garbage dump. I thought it was just stress.” She glared into the Luckster’s eyes, catching his attention. “But now I understand. Your speech, your mannerisms, the cheerful façade hiding a monstrous nature, they’re very similar to _his_.”

Naegi’s eyebrows rose. “By ‘his’ you must mean…”

1\. Jin Kirigiri  
2\. Santa Claus  
>3\. Monobear

 **”That’s it!** Monobear, right? Yep, you got it. Monobear’s personality is based on mine. We used a completed version of Fujisaki’s alter ego program. Well, Enoshima-san was in direct control most of the time when Monobear interacted with us, but she mimicked the program when she did.” He shrugged.

Out came Junko’s tongue again. “That was the fucking worst! Having to spend weeks pretending to be such a freaking weirdo as you!”

Shoulders slumping dejectedly, Naegi sighed. “That’s mean. And I don’t want to hear that from someone who gets bored of her own personality every twenty seconds.”

Kirigiri interrupted, leaning with her hands on her podium, smaller than any of them had ever known her to be. “So I was right. Something happened to you down in that pit.”

“Yeah.” Naegi acknowledged. “There was a net down there that helped break my fall. It was electrified, and the shock caused my memories to return… And by the way, it wasn’t in the original plan that I’d have my memories taken like the rest of you. Just another trick of Enoshima-san’s.”

Junko stood with hands on hips, smirking. “I would never take a risk on something this important with your acting skills.” She laughed grotesquely, a string of drool handing from her mouth. “Did you like it? The real reason was so you could feel the Despair of your true self emerging all over again.”

Naegi laughed, for a moment sounding like an innocent child, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, you got me pretty good. It’s a good thing Kirigiri took a while to get down to me, because I was a total wreck for a while there.”

Kirigiri spoke again, still shrinking into herself. “But what I don’t understand is why. Why did you do this? Why keep going?”

His smile turning almost sad, Naegi answered. “Because being optimistic is my only strong point. I have to believe that this is how it was meant to be. I can’t stop. It’s just not in my makeup. And because I’m just an average boy, with average abilities and average desires. And yet I helped bring down the world. It was possible for me to do it, so obviously it was so close to happening that it only needed a little push. If I could do it, then it deserved to happen.

“Nobody ever knew my true nature until now. Even for all my failures, the remaining pockets of hope look at me like a messiah. My presence here made the academic coliseum twice as Despair-inducing for the world, and the reveal of my betrayal will double it again. So I will continue to fill the world with Despair until humanity is boiled away, and only our purest essence remains. It will be a Hope so pure and so strong that all the suffering will be more than worth it.”

“Hmm. Too bad you won’t be around to see it.” Junko said with a Monobear held in front of her face. “Because we still have a super nasty punishment to get to.”

Gasps came from several of his friends, but Naegi just sighed and raised his hands in placation. “There’s really no need for that, Enoshima-san.”

“Upupupupu. Of course there is. I’m a real stickler for the rules, you know!”

Naegi sighed again, sadly, but without a single hint of fear. “You may be, Enoshima-san, but I’m not. Nor is the true Monobear…” He looked back and forth between Asahina and Hagakure, positioned next to Junko. “ **You guys** should really hit the floor, right about now.”

With that he turned around and dropped into a crouch, shielding himself with his coat. A high-speed beeping filled the room, giving his two friends only enough time to dive out of the way. Junko’s reaction time wasn’t as good. She only stared at the mechanical bear in her hands until it detonated, taking out her and her entire pulpit in the blast.

For a moment, nobody moved. Then they heard a sound. It was strangled and sputtering, but it was still laughter.

“Uppp, ppt, ppuh. Oh, I shouldn’t laugh.” Naegi stood and faced the center of the court, a hand still over his mouth. “Monobear’s true personality is based on my own, so of course he would side with me over her. I made the arrangements for just this kind of thing as soon as I could find an unwatched moment. If she has any awareness in the afterlife, I bet she’s Despairing that her one chance to die was wasted in such an anticlimactic way. I’m sure she had such an incredibly overblown death planned out for herself… Or me. But as I said before, I don’t go in for that kind of thing.” He said, off in his own world.

Shou was laughing uproariously, while Kirigiri and Togami checked on Asahina and Hagakure (reluctantly in Togami’s case). They seemed to both be fine. Naegi ignored them and turned to leave the courtroom, rubbing an ache in his chest.

“Stop right there!” Togami demanded, pointing a finger his way. “We’re not done with you yet. Now that the madwoman is gone, you’re next.”

Naegi spun around and stomped his way back to his pulpit, slamming a hand down on the rail. “Shut your fucking mouth! She was a goddess made flesh, and you will not speak about her that way!”

“Like hell!” Asahina staggered around the ring of courtroom pulpits, tears streaming from her face. “You bastards killed our families!”

“ **You’ve got that wrong!** ” Naegi turned, swinging his hand wildly. “You don’t know they’re dead. You don’t even know how bad things really are outside. There’s still a chance if you can just get out there and find them. Maybe you can even reclaim a bit of your old lives. All you need is a way. A way to go find out. And here it is.” He tossed something to Asahina, a small metal box with an antenna and a red button labeled ‘emergency override.’ She caught it with a look of anger giving way to awe. “You’re still alive. As long as you are alive… You will always have… Hope.”

He had given them a way out. But all Asahina could do was stare at the override, almost in terror of the possibilities it represented. Too afraid to Hope again.

“Or you could stay here.” Naegi continued, offering his other hand. “You’ll always be welcome. Despite what Enoshima said, Monobear won’t shut down the air purifier while I’m still alive. Even if you leave, I’ll let you return. I know you guys hate me right now, but if you step outside I think you’ll see that there are harder things than forgiveness.”

“I’ll stay.” Togami said immediately. His glasses flashed, and he raised an accusing finger at Naegi. “Until I can find a way to kill you.”

Naegi rolled his eyes and brushed a bit of charred flesh off his shoulder. His response was equally off-hand. “You can’t. You proved that already when you gave in to Despair ten minutes ago. You just don’t have the strength of character to kill me. Not to mention the army of Monobears hidden in this school. Maybe if Oogami-san and Mukuro-chan were still around, and maybe if Enoshima were still in control, you’d have a chance at getting to me through them. But compared to her, you’ll find I’m more willing to use limited retribution when called for, and also more willing to use lethal force when called for. And unlike her, I won’t give you a chance if I can help it. So do as you please.” He stepped into the elevator and hit the button with a fist. “I’ll send it back down for the rest of you.” He said as the door closed.

They ran after him and someone started banging on the grate, yelling for him to come back. He ignored them, though he really did mean to send the elevator back immediately once he was off. He just didn't think it would be wise to be in such a small space with them right at that moment, and also he really needed a moment to himself. But then a voice came over the intercom.

_“Upupupu. That was a pretty good show, Headmaster. I'll bet you can't wait to hear how people are responding. Should we start preparing for the next stage?”_

Naegi looked up at the empty spot where the voice came from. “Monobear… Yes, do that, and... Turn the camera off.” Knowing that it would be done immediately, he was alone at last, well and truly. Naegi slumped against a wall, letting the tension fall away. His shoulders shook, and for the first time in a long while he let himself cry, let the Despair that filled his soul overflow. Everything was on him now. He was not a good person, and could never be one again. So he would seek out those who had the potential to understand Hope and Despair as thoroughly as he did, but not yet tainted by such a burden of sin. He would throw them into a crucible, teach them, harden them into diamond, and together they would create the new humanity. It was the only path forward left to him after everything he’d done. And he could never stop. Knowing when to give up was just beyond someone as optimistic as him.

**Author's Note:**

> So, there you have it. There's Makoto Naegi warped into one of Junko's followers. But rather than do what a lot of Despair!Naegi fics do, making him into basically a male version of Junko or else completely off his rocker, I tried to leave something in him so that he could still be recognized as himself. How did I do?


End file.
